Panel discusses conflict resolution

Tuesday night, The Peace and Justice Studies department sponsored a lecture panel which emphasized working on methods to provide peaceful resolutions to international conflicts. The panelists drew parallels between peaceful solutions to problems developed on a local level and possible ones in international relations.

Dale Bryan, assistant director of the Peace and Justice Studies department, proclaimed in introducing the panel that "our current government only knows violence and war." The populace needs to realize there are alternatives to military action, according to Bryan.

Tara Brown, co-chair of Duggen Park Public Relations Committee, described a recent instance of peaceful mediation in West Medford, her hometown. As a result of an "influx of people" and rising property values, some residents began to "hang out" in the park and drink to the dismay of their neighbors. The situation escalated until one resident was assaulted. Brown was on a committee that helped mediate the confrontation and found non-violent means of creating a stronger, more cohesive community.

Victoria Swain, director of the Institutes for Global Leadership in New York City and Worcester created a reconciliation certificate program and the Student Conflict Resolution Experts (SCORE) for the Worcester school system. Her program is focussed on mediating conflicts and helping victims overcome tragedy through reconciliation as opposed to violence, or an act of "justified" aggression.

Another speaker, Donna Hicks, director of the program on International Conflict and Resolution at Harvard, has been working with identity-based ethnic conflict resolution. Her approach is to have dialogues about human needs, or what she calls "dignity needs." These needs comprise one's identity and belonging.

Humans need a process for peace to ensure that violations to human needs will not recur, Hicks said.

To help dismantle the cycle of war and violence, Director of the Non-Violence Peace Force, Mel Duncan, described the benefits of his force and passed around a sign up sheet. Begun in 1999 in the Netherlands, the organization's goal was to put "together policies to build relationships to make war obsolete," Duncan said.

With the group, Duncan researched violence and conflict resolution in places such as the Philippines and Columbia. Duncan also described the use of nonviolent bodyguards to protect vulnerable leaders and negotiators in places such as Nicaragua.

According to Duncan's non-violent peace force brochure, his mission is "to create a trained, international, civilian, standing nonviolent peace force... sent to conflict areas to prevent death and destruction and protect human rights."

The need for this new attitude toward solving political conflicts was emphasized as a different approach in the age of terrorism. Swain discussed the need for peace and "reconciliation leadership" in the post-9/11 world. Lack of trust and safety has warped the US perception, Swain argued, placing a blanket of fear around our relations with other countries.

The Peace and Justice department offers courses about social movements and conflict negotiation. This semester's offerings include "The Sociology of War and Peace" and "Global Change."